


Aquamarine

by trascendenza



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Female-Centric, Fusion, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV Female Character, Women Being Awesome, layers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-29
Updated: 2009-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the other bomb had gone off AU. <em>"For all of us," she finishes for him, because Jim Gordon is the last person she'll accept pity from right now. "Gotham's at its weakest, Commissioner, and this is when the wolves start to circle. I, for one, fully intend to meet them."</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Aquamarine

"No, no, no," she cries as Jim's arms wrap around her, and he's yelling over and over again that everything will be all right, like if he says it often enough he will make it true. "Not me, not me, it's not supposed to be me."

But Harvey's end has already gone to static, and Jim's arms don't let go.

*

She wakes up the next morning choking on the taste of smoke and surrounded by the whir of hospital machinery. A nurse looks on as she hacks, her diaphragm convulsing, _no, no, no, this can't be_. Somehow the woman knows to raise the bucket when the bile rises in Rachel's throat and she hangs onto the edges of it, hands like claws, long after she's voided the entire contents of her stomach. She's afraid to let go.

*

The news buzzes through the hospital like the endless drone of a bad radio station. What will Gotham do, who's going to protect them from the criminals, who will save them from the freaks now?

Rachel would laugh, if she had the energy.

*

There's a face swimming in her vision. Even through her watercolor blurred eyes it radiates concern, and when the edges resolve themselves, she turns away.

"Commissioner," she croaks out wearily.

"They told me they're discharging you tomorrow morning," he says, his hat bunched up in his hands. "I'd like to take you home, if that's all right."

"No, _Commissioner_," she says, using the word like it's a physical object to create distance between them, like it's a wall. "It's not all right."

"Just one squad car, that's all I ask—"

"Don't," she stops him, heart monitor bleeping alarmingly. "Just don't."

He leaves.

*

"Oh, schatz," Annegred says when she walks into the room, and her hand goes straight for her throat, a gasp caught there.

"Mom," Rachel whispers, and right then: that's when it all becomes real, when she sees the horrifying sympathy in her mother's eyes.

She shakes uncontrollably, but Annegred's arms hold her tightly until she's asleep again.

*

Her apartment looks just the way she left it. She wasn't sure what she was expecting: chaos, ruins, smoke and ash. But there's _The Joy Luck Club_ face down on her coffee table where she stopped reading on Tuesday, the stack of papers that she'll never get through on the corner of her desk, her running shoes strewn beside the door, one on its side and still giving off that slightly damp smell from the other morning in the park.

And there's the half-drunk mug of white tea that she abandoned when they came for her.

"You just go get in bed, I will clean it up in here," Annegred says, hands on Rachel's shoulders steering her to her bedroom. "A good night's sleep in your own bed and you will feel like a new woman."

She lets her mother tuck her in, ensconcing her in a cocoon of white blankets. She sighs, burrowing down, closes her eyes and prays she won't dream.

*

Annegred's still asleep in the guest room when she gets up, padding barefoot through the kitchen. She goes to the sink and drinks straight out of the tap for ten long minutes, gulping the liquid down like she's been wandering the desert for forty days and nights.

When she's done she walks around, aimlessly. The clock reads 4:34 in neon green and she opens and closes cupboards without looking inside or taking anything out. Everything's surreal, seen through a distance like she's watching everything in front of her unfold through a camera.

But it all feels so normal, too, somehow. Like she's a bottle, perfectly and deceptively wrapped on the surface, concealing all the emptiness inside.

She's rummaging through her cheese drawer – that cheddar's starting to harden around the edges, she'll have to make a casserole or something soon otherwise the whole thing's going to dry out – when she hears her answering machine beep on.

"Assistant – oh, right, excuse me – Interim District Attorney, hi, my name's Gerald Scott and I've tried you at your office a number of times, and while your secretary has assured me that you will get back to me, this is a matter of the utmost importance that needs to be addressed immediately…"

She puts down the container half-full of orange juice and blinks.

_Huh,_ she thinks. _Interim again. Wonder what it'll take so I never have to hear that fucking word again._

And for the first time since Harvey was cut off in the middle of saying _everything's going to be—_, something inside of her wakes up.

*

"Schatz, please, no." Annegred puts her hand on Rachel's shoulder. "You cannot do this. You are not ready."

"Mom." Rachel tears into her toast. "I appreciate your concern, really. I do. But I'm never going to be ready, and the city needs its District Attorney right now."

"A few more days, then. Mrs. Tam has said already that it would be fine if I take the week off."

She gulps down her third glass of water and brushes the crumbs of the toast off the black collar of her jacket. "I'm sorry, mom. My decision's final."

Annegred sighs, the same way she did when Rachel looked her in the eyes and said _even if I have to pay my own way, I'm going, Mom. You'll see. When I win my first case, you'll see why I had to do this._

Rachel was wrong; Annegred never did see, even though she came to every one of Rachel's trials and cried at her graduation. She still brings pamphlets about teaching every time they get together.

She clearly doesn't see now, raising her hand to Rachel's face, running her thumb along the line of stitches on Rachel's forehead, but the gesture is more melancholy than angry. Her skin is dry, chapped, tough, and reminds Rachel of the early mornings at the manor when she would scrub beside her mother, soap bubbling under her fingers and the smell of lemon nearly making her dizzy.

"At least let me stay," Annegred says, and she looks small and sad and worried in a way Rachel hasn't seen in a long time.

"Of course," Rachel says, taking Annegred's hand in her own. "Of course."

*

"Ms. Dawes," the reporter says, his tomato red face shining under the bright lights that the camera crews train on him when he stands up. "What is the city's official statement regarding the escape of the Joker? What is being done to track him down? Every day he's loose the citizens of Gotham are at risk, and we demand answers."

The lights are blinding in her eyes, and every pair of eyes in the giant round room is focused on her, pressing down like a smothering weight on her chest.

She looks at this man and feels nothing but cold. He's so insultingly tiny and insignificant in the face of what has passed that she can't even muster up any anger.

"As Interim District Attorney, I personally promise you and every citizen of Gotham that I will not rest until he's found." She leans forward into the microphones, and she knows that her voice is anything but reassuring, but she can't find it in herself to care. Her chest feels like ice. "He will be brought to justice by any means necessary."

The reporter stutters something meaningless and sits back down in his chair. The next round of questions have nothing to do with the Joker, and even as she's talking, half of her attention is on mentally adding notes to the _ways to steer a press conference in the right direction_ list that she's started keeping.

*

_He left you a third_, the small and neat script informs her when she gets home and finds the note on her stoop. _It's going to take them ages to sort out the paperwork and do the proper will reading, but I thought you'd like to know._

_With love,  
Alfred_

_P.S. As Lucius and I have more than enough to keep us well into our old age, we will be signing over our portions to you as soon as the attorneys will stop trying to talk us out of it. Greedy buggers, the lot of them._

_We have every faith that you will know what to do with it._

_Yes,_ she thinks as she slips the immaculate cream paper back inside the envelope, _I just might._

*

She looks at the beautiful mahogany casket being lowered into the ground and she wants to cry. For the cameras, maybe, or for Annegred, standing beside Rachel with a pinched expression on her face, like she'll cry for them both, if she has to.

She even tries, viciously scratching the inside of her wrist, thinking of how she felt at her grandmother's funeral and how she sobbed as they took away her Oma. But she can't find anything, just a vast, numb expanse of ice, and a weariness so heavy that she fights with everything she has. She can't – she _won't_ – give into it, because if she does, she doesn't know how she'll come out again.

*

_Goodbye, Harvey,_ she tries to say that night in bed, staring up at the ceiling. But the words feel like a lie, even in her head, and they won't come out. She doesn't have the right to say it, not yet.

*

"We urge the city of Gotham to carefully consider the ramifications of the registration initiative," the woman says, looking directly into the camera from behind her black framed glasses. "It infringes on our most basic human rights."

The split-screen switches its focus over to the opposing side. "The doctor makes very pretty speeches couched in terms that would lead most unsuspecting listeners to believe that this is an issue that affects all people, but what Ms. Grey fails to mention is that the registration is something that will affect _only_ mutants, and it is a vital measure in determining what percentage of our population has succumbed to these aberrations…"

Rachel clicks off in the middle of Senator Kelly's diatribe. She's heard it before, not just from his mouth, but from the mouths of a thousand other men in power who came before him. Why he thinks he's any different she can't begin to imagine.

*

That night, she sits in the tub for hours, letting the heat soak away the last few weeks, the last few years. The police scanner that she always leaves on now crackles quietly in the background.

When she gets out, she doesn't bother wrapping a towel around herself. She stands in front of the mirror, wiping the steam off the mirror and looking at herself. She's gaunt, wiry, thin: a survivor. All the excess has melted away.

She forces herself to bed – her publicist has ranted at her twelve times this week about the black circles under her eyes – and wonders idly as she's falling asleep why her hands and feet aren't all pruned up the way they would normally get. Maybe it's something in the water.

*

Amidst three stale cups of coffee, a mountain of unanswered correspondence and skyscraper-sized stacks of files she needs to go through, she works. It's 3:42AM and the only noise that interrupts her is the footsteps of the security patrol every half hour.

Two weeks ago, it was a rumor of a rumor. Tonight, it's three possible addresses and half of a telephone number.

She'll get the rest if it takes her until dawn.

*

"Mom, yeah, hi," she says to the machine, pushing down the guilt that she specifically called when she knew Annegred was at work. "Listen, about dinner – I'm going to have to re-schedule. Maybe later this month? I'll call you back, I promise."

She hangs up and refills her glass of water, settling in at her desk for another long Saturday of chasing down any and all leads.

*

"Commissioner," she says by way of introduction when she opens the door and comes into his office.

His assistant, a thin-boned brunette, looks at Rachel with her eyes wide and doe-like from behind her owlish glasses. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, you can't be in here, I'll be right out with you –"

"It's fine, Selma," Jim says, handing her back whatever paper they'd been discussing. "Ms. Dawes is always welcome here. If you'll just give us a moment."

"Of course," Selma says, smiling at Rachel with a slight flush of embarrassment coloring her chestnut cheeks and slipping out.

"Please," Jim says, leaning back against his desk and gesturing, "have a seat."

Rachel ignores the offer and strides briskly forward, handing Jim a file. "I'm here to let you know, officially, that I'll be running for District Attorney."

"Now, Rachel," Jim starts.

"Don't try to talk me out of it," she says, and the cold is back, constricting at the back of her neck, behind her eyes. "We both know there's no one better for the job."

"You won't hear any argument from me," he says, setting the file down on his desk. He rests his hands on his thighs and gives her the sort of look that she sometimes got from Mr. Wayne, before she was old enough to understand that comments like _daddy left a long time ago_ made adults uncomfortable. "But it's so soon, so soon after everything, and it's been a hard time for –"

"For all of us," she finishes for him, because Jim Gordon is the last person she'll accept pity from right now. "Gotham's at its weakest, Commissioner, and this is when the wolves start to circle. I, for one, fully intend to meet them."

Jim looks at her for a long time, like he's peeling her open layer by layer and examining each one in turn. Finally, he half-smiles and stands up straight, extending his hand.

"You have my full support."

She doesn't quite smile back, but it's close enough, and takes his hand. "Thank you."

*

"Damn!" She yells in the empty room, kicking at the wall. Her foot punches a hole right through the rotting wood. There's a bare bulb hanging from a cord and a note on the floor reading _So glad you could stop by, beautiful. Sorry I had to leave before the party got started. Maybe next time you'll be a little faster, huh?_

_Love,_  
_The star of your oh-so-riveting revenge soap opera_

After she carefully seals up the note in an evidence bag, she kicks the door off its hinges and breaks it into pieces, slamming it against the doorframe with her bare hands, stomping the pieces down into splinters and seeing red, red, red.

When she's washing her hands at home, she towels them off and finds no cuts, just little clear lines all over her skin that look like transparent scars. A few hours later, even those are gone. She thinks idly that she should ask her doctor about it the next time she's there and gets ready to go back to the office to get the evidence in for analysis.

*

"A pretty lady like you, what do you need a gun for?" The salesman asks, smiling behind his gigantic black beard at her like she's a little girl who's just walked into a liquor store.

"Nothing that's any of your business," she says coldly, taking the pen and filling out the paper work with the name of a dead woman they'll never track back to her.

*

"Mom," Rachel says, approaching the front of her building. "What are you doing here? How long have you been standing here? It's freezing." Rachel punches in her security code and ushers her in.

"You have not returned my calls and I know that you are lying when you say you will call me back," Annegred says, bringing her hands up to her mouth and blowing into them.

"Mom, I'm…" Rachel sighs, pushing the elevator button. "I'm sorry. I've just been so busy with work, and—"

"And ignoring your mother, yes, I know," Annegred says, but she smiles to temper it. "Do not try to play with me, child. I have carried you for nine months. My own flesh cannot lie to me."

They step into the elevator when it opens, and Annegred takes one of Rachel's hands in her near-frozen one, shaking it lightly. "Now. Do you want to tell me what is really wrong, or will I have to ask Ms. Tam for more weeks off to come and stay with you?"

"I—" Rachel stops, realizing that the excuses she's been using for the past few weeks are not going to cut it. "I don't even know where to start."

"Well." She pats Rachel's hand. "Making dinner is a good place."

Rachel laughs. "Yeah, I had a feeling you'd say that." The elevator doors open, and they go into her apartment. She tosses her coat down on one of the kitchen chairs, glances at the mail but doesn't open any of it, and puts on a kettle of water for them.

"Have you eaten yet?"

Annegred wrinkles her nose. "If you are making hamburger helper, yes, I have eaten."

"There will be at least three real vegetables in the meal, I promise. Maybe even a chicken that once saw the light of day."

"Well, in that case, let me help you."

Rachel pulls out the ingredients – she manages four real vegetables, although the peas are frozen – and they chop in companionable silence for awhile.

"I see you have not done it yet," Annegred says as she pulls the skin off a clove of garlic, looking at the urn that has her third of Bruce's ashes. "He did wish to be scattered, did he not?"

And Rachel feels her throat tighten, and wants nothing more than to turn away, to pretend that the urn isn't there – she's been doing a great job of it lately, her eyes just automatically avoiding that corner of the room – and she has to put down the knife because she's tempted to do something stupid, like cut herself just so there's something else to focus on, so she won't have to talk about this, won't have to face it.

"Shh," Annegred says, putting down the garlic and placing a hand on Rachel's back. "It is fine. You do not have to tell me."

"I wish I could," Rachel says, bracing her hands on the countertop. "Believe me, I do."

"I believe you." She rubs soothing circles. "When you are ready, you will do it."

"Oh, mom," Rachel says, and a few tears slip out, but she still can't let go, even though looking into Annegred's blue eyes she wishes she knew how.

"Come, the water boils." Annegred opens the bag of pasta and pours it into the water, and Rachel stirs it in until her hands stop shaking.

*

She attends the symposium in an official capacity, so she carefully stays neutral on the issues when the reporters hound her because this is a hot-button topic that's going to be resolved just weeks before the special election, and she's not going to take a firm stance until the chips have fallen.

But personally, she hopes to God that the state kills the initiative. Kelly tried to push it through nationally and failed, and she just hopes the same trend holds down on the smaller scale.

"We all possess genetic mutations…" Dr. Mumbe is saying, and she listens with half an ear, because it's been five hours, she's sick of the stomach-lining-dissolving coffee and cold danishes, and she certainly didn't care what alleles were back in high school and damned if she cares now.

"Rachel Dawes," a gentle voice says, interrupting her half trance-like state. "I do not believe that we have been formally introduced."

She turns in her seat and does a slight double take when she recognizes the face. "Charles Xavier," she says, nodding. "I've heard a lot about you."

He smiles. "Hopefully all of it good, though with human nature being what it is, I do doubt it."

She smiles back. "And I'm in entirely too vulnerable a political position to confirm or deny that statement."

He inclines his head. "Of course. Well, it has been quite a pleasure Ms. Dawes, but if you will excuse me, I believe I am up next." Dr. Mumbe is winding down with a summary so full of scientific terminology that Rachel doesn't even bother trying to understand.

"Good luck."

"Thank you." He starts to move away, but then stops, half-turning his chair back in her direction. "And, Ms. Dawes. I will be returning to Gotham in two months." He says it like he thinks she might need to know this, like she'll know what to make of the information when the time comes.

*

She knows he's been in here before she's even fully opened the door. It's nothing concrete, not a smell or a thing out of place or a mark – it's just a fist clenching in her gut, the taste of bile in the back of her throat when she walks in.

She turns on the light to find an unmarked manila envelope on the table. She opens it without hesitation – if he wanted to kill or hurt her, he could have done it a million times by now – and finds a blown-up picture inside. It's her and Bruce, kissing, as seen through his penthouse window.

She imagines the kind of equipment it would have taken to get this shot, the patience and positioning and timing, and there isn't even a trace of fear, anymore, it's just a roaring red wave of white-hot energy that courses through her, all the blood rushing to the surface of her skin, prickling, pins and needles all over.

He's drawn red x's on Bruce's face, and put a question mark next to hers. _And what will become of you?_, it says, written along the outline of her body.

She sets it down on her kitchen table, right in the center, carefully aligned. She doesn't scream, she doesn't break anything, she doesn't flinch or look away. The rush drains out of her and she's left as cold as a lake frozen over in the middle of winter, surface impenetrable.

*

"I'll tell you where he is!" The man cries out after thirty minutes, sweat pouring off him, his clothes entirely soaked through.

*

This time, she doesn't find a note. She finds the body of the man who ratted him out, strung up by a noose.

On his shirt it says _naughty, naughty_ in what she knows is blood.

She calls it in anonymously, checking as she leaves to make sure she's left no traces behind.

*

_"The top story of the hour is the defeat of the registration initiative. Protests rage all around the city, but an even larger rally of supporters have surged out into the streets despite the snow and are marching down to city hall this evening…"_

"Cheers," Rachel says, raising her glass as the TV goes on in the background.

"To a world not gone entirely mad, yet," Pepper says, the apples of her cheeks pink from the twelve other toasts.

"And to your upcoming election," Barbara adds, raising her glass, "may the best woman win."

Rachel smiles. "Since I'm the only woman running, I'd say I've got this one in the bag."

"To Rachel having it in the bag!" Helena says, always one to toast to everything for an excuse to drink more. "And to having a friend who'll make those pesky little speeding tickets go away."

"Ah, but campaign promises are made to be broken," Rachel says, "and ninety miles an hour within city limits is unlawful, regardless of whom you're friends with," she adds, tilting her glass at Helena, who pouts.

"It's not like I can help it if my bike wants to go that fast," she insists, pouring herself another glass of wine.

Lois rolls her eyes. "As if you don't love getting pulled over just to see if you can seduce your way out of it."

"As I was saying," Barbara interrupts before Helena and Lois can get started, because once they started, they never stopped, "I know I speak for everyone in this room, Rachel, when I say that Gotham couldn't hope for a better District Attorney. You're a wise, strong, fair and intelligent woman, and I am profoundly grateful to have you in my life. Win or lose, you will always have my highest regard."

"Barbara…" Rachel blushes, at a loss for words.

"Yeah, what she said," Helena chimes in, and they all laugh, toasting again just because they can.

*

Two weeks later, the _Interim_ is officially removed from her title.

Her election headquarters explode in a frenzy, and she stands in the middle, willing herself to feel something.

*

He isn't that hard to track down for a man of his position. She stands at the door for what feels like hours, not sure if she wants to knock, not sure why she's even here.

Just when she's decided to go, the door opens.

"Please," Charles says, gesturing her in. "Join me."

She enters awkwardly, and feels even worse when she sees that there's room service for two. "I'm sorry for interrupting, I'll just come back another time, it really wasn't important –"

Charles holds up a hand. "I hope that you don't mind my presumption, but I ordered for the both of us. Are chicken and asparagus to your taste?"

"That telepath thing," she says, waving a hand in the vicinity of his head, "that just never turns off, does it?"

He laughs. "Though some of my students will tell you otherwise, I am not prescient. I simply... had a strong feeling I would be seeing you again."

She sits down and takes a sip from the glass of water, which is deliciously fresh and cold with a touch of lemon. "And why did you have that feeling?"

He slices through his asparagus neatly and precisely, but puts down his fork and knife before speaking. He looks at her, gently, the way a person does when they're about to say something that changes everything. "I take it you've noticed."

Rachel sets down the glass, swallowing loudly. "What?"

"Would you be here if you hadn't?"

"Well. Yes. But I – I'm not sure I even believe that it means anything –"

"Then what's the harm in telling me about it?"

She sighs. "It makes it more real."

He moves his chair over to her end of the table. His hand hovers over hers. "May I?"

She's not sure what he's asking but inexplicably, she trusts him, so she gives a slight nod.

He closes his eyes, skin just barely in contact with hers, like a hint rather than a touch. "Ah, I see."

"What?"

He opens his eyes, pulling his hand back. "You fear what you will do with this."

She thinks about the man sweating in the interrogation room, when she'd done nothing more than stare, how he seemed to be boiling under her focus. "I think I'm already doing things with it." She stands up, suddenly uncomfortable with his quiet evaluation of her, unable to sit still. She starts pacing. "I mean, how is this even possible? I thought… these kinds of things reveal themselves during puberty. And neither of my parents, well, my mom certainly isn't…"

"The human body is an infinitely complex mechanism," he says, watching her placidly. "It has depths which we have not even begun to scratch. It is not unheard of that the signs display themselves later in life. Some potential lies dormant until activated."

Rachel stops pacing. "And what activates it?"

"Extraordinary conditions – trauma, near-death, environmental shifts – that call forth the body's instinctual survival mechanism." Charles spreads his hands expressively. "Life, by its definition, is rising to meet circumstances."

Rachel sits down again, staring heavily at the table. "Well. You certainly know how to make dinner conversation."

Charles laughs, picking up his fork again. "I have never been accused of being dull."

*

A few days later, she receives a letter.

_Remember, my dear: the most important thing that water can do is flow. All else will come with time._

She runs a bath and stares at the tub for an hour, trying to make sense of his words and the odd tingling sensation in her fingertips.

*

Her first week in office she receives ten very serious death threats (and fifty-seven that are categorized as "not serious," because they don't include red flag details such as references to her family, her residence, or her habits).

She tapes them on her wall, and evaluates her handiwork with a grin.

"Bring it on," she says, and _this_, this is what she knows she's meant to do.

*

"Thanks for dinner, mom, next week we'll do it at my place," Rachel gives Annegred a quick kiss on the cheek and takes out her keys.

"Wait," Annegred says, putting a hand on Rachel's elbow before she can open the car door.

Rachel stops. Annegred looks young in the street lights, her edges smoothed by the dew-softened light. She's looking at Rachel like she's never seen her before, like she's someone totally new, the same expression she had on her face she'd opened the door to Rachel earlier this evening and shook her head wonderingly, murmuring _my daughter, the District Attorney_.

"I think that it is time," Annegred says, dipping her hand into her neckline and pulling out the necklace she's worn for as long as Rachel can remember, the gold filigree dull in the light, running her thumb over the three pearls in the center.

She holds it out. "I see now, schatz, why you had to do it." She sighs. "I will always have gray hairs worrying for you, but that does not stop me from being so proud of the woman you have become."

Rachel takes the necklace, passed down from long before she was a gleam in her great-great-grandmother's eye. She remembers the black and white picture of her Oma with her head thrown back, laughing, her thick black curls running down her back, this necklace resting in the crook of her collarbones. There are generations of women in the metal, just waiting to tell her their stories.

Rachel, overwhelmed, takes it and clasps it with shaking fingers around her neck. "I'll take care of it," she promises.

Annegred cups a hand around her cheek. "I know that you will."

*

After six hours of trying, she manages to get the water in the glass to swirl in a miniature whirlpool.

She falls into bed, exhausted, and sleeps twenty hours. She dreams of oceans roaring inside her.

*

"So," Rachel asks when the tour of the grounds is finished, and they're in Charles' top floor office, overlooking the pond, "if a hypothetical someone were interested in starting an institution similar to this one in, say, Gotham, how would one go about doing that?"

Charles, for the first time since she's met him, looks surprised. "Well," he says, "to answer fully that question, I believe I will be needing another cup of tea."

Rachel grins.

*

Three months later, and she's run so ragged trying to stay on top of crime in her city that there are entire nights she forgets to pursue leads on the Joker. She has more and more moments when she thinks about the future instead of the past. When the government therapist she's required to see for another six months asks about the nightmares, Rachel's surprised to realize she isn't having them anymore.

Then, in the middle of the night, she wakes and finds herself hovering three inches off her bed.

And she _feels_, she feels it in her body, God, it's almost three quarters of what she is, how did she not _feel_ this before, and her senses splay out, like a great growing vine expanding exponentially and for one brilliant and overwhelming moment she feels it everywhere, in the air, in the trees, in the ground, in all the people of the city.

She opens her eyes, gasping, because suddenly she _knows._

*

She kicks the door in and there he is, sitting in a chair under a bare bulb swinging from a cord, hands resting in his lap, like he was expecting her.

She doesn't say a word, just raises the gun and aims directly between his eyes.

"It is about time," he says, smiling. "I've been waiting oh so long."

"Here I am." She takes a step closer.

"And isn't this a change of heart? Little miss goody two shoes carrying deadly force with intent to harm." He shakes a finger at her, _tsk_ing. "Behavior quite unbecoming for the new white queen of Gotham."

"Things change."

"Ah, that they do. And aren't you such a perfect example, going from two suitors down to zero with one little blast. Bet that put a damper on your weekend plans."

"I'm done playing your game!" She screams, red washing over her vision.

"Oh, but we're just getting started. You see, your boyfriends weren't very good sport. They were so very adamant about their rules and regulations that they could never let loose and have some real fun. But you, you." He grins. "You are something special."

And the rage boils up in her, heating up the air around them, heating it so hot that if she weren't the source her skin would have peeled off, and even with the slight protection of distance the makeup is melting off his face and his clothes are soaking through.

He claps his hands. "Brava! She has a little fight in her, after all."

She screams, and it's like she's screaming underwater, distorted and rippling, and all she can hear is static, Harvey lying to her, telling her everything was going to be fine, and she lost them both in that moment, because of this man in front of her, and all she wants is to see him burn, burn like a sinner in hell.

And when she stops, the gun has dropped to her side, and he's grinning at her, grinning at her like he knew it all along, like he knew she'd never go through with it and he was just toying with her.

"Of course, you're no Batman, are you? Now there, there was an immovable object. I could play with him all I wanted and he'd never break."

And then she runs cold, cold, cold, everything inside of her freezing. Because there's Harvey, the way he used to rest his hands on her ribs, right there, and she can't, she can't remember this, and there's Bruce, leading her through the forest around the manor, promising her they'll find the deer he saw last night if they just go a little farther, and it's so much easier, so much easier to be numb than to be here, to remember all the moments she'll never have again.

But she recalls Charles' words, and the sensation of molecules in the air, always moving. And the sweat is pouring out of her skin like catharsis, like poison leaving her body.

The gold burns her skin, and there are a hundred women coursing through her veins, giving her the strength to do what needs to be done.

"You're right," she says. "I'm no Batman." She raises the gun again, resting the barrel on his forehead. _This is for Gotham,_ she thinks.

She pulls the trigger.

*

Clouds, she finds out, have their own distinctive feeling: like fog, but heavy with the scent of rain and storm and atmosphere.

*

The bathwater is still steaming when she gets out.

She approaches the mirror, brows furrowing. The condensation on the glass clears with a thought. She smiles with the power of it.

She is naked from head to toe, skin bright and flushed from the water. She runs her hands over her ribs, closing her eyes for a moment and remembering Harvey's hand in the same place. Fingertips on her lips where she tried to promise Bruce a life they'd never have. She breathes into the ache.

Dropping her hands, she takes it all in: the concave of her upper stomach that's only hollowed out more with her long nights at the office; the smooth definition of her thighs; the slope of her shoulders; the heaviness of her breasts. The water that she feels in her body as tangibly as blood.

_This is what I am_, she thinks, and she doesn't want to run away.

*

The ashes coat the waves like foam, and she watches until they're gone.

"Goodbye," she whispers, and turns back to her city.

*

The next day, she gives a three hour press conference discussing the details of the Joker's murder. Contrary to her usual method of sharing the bare minimum, she spares no details.

Apparently, he was taken out by an unnamed vigilante. No, they haven't been able to identify this person, but they will of course pursue a full investigation.


End file.
